A notsotight Leash
by Nightambre
Summary: Impulsive actions lead to impulsive decisions and sometimes you wind yourself up in a leash. And how tight it is all depends on how you look at it. [KibaIno]


This was just one of those random ideas that pop in your head at strange hours. And it's fluffy. No lead up or anything. Just a little something written down.

Impulse was always his enemy. He really couldn't help it. If he felt something, he went with it. Impulse was responsible for the scars that lined his body. Impulse was responsible for the fractures in his heart. And impulse was responsible for the way he picked himself up after each fall. So, perhaps in that sense, it wasn't entirely a bad thing, but it was responsible for most of the trouble he got himself into.

Like this sort of trouble.

He couldn't blame impulse completely. Even after a couple of years, she turned his eye just as readily as any new discovery. In a lot of ways, he was thankful for someone to return to, even if he did get distracted from her often. But even impulse had its way with him, and her. It was why he currently found himself in a situation that he swore he would never get into.

He never saw himself as a married man. In fact, the thought really, really never settled well with him. But, despite of that, he had a sense of family, and a sense of duty to his own. Which was why when she had came to him with a bit of news that caused his entire life crash messily, he did everything he could to see to it that she was part of his family by the end of that month (Even without the beating he was sure to get if he had stalled).

But it was an impulsive decision to make up for an impulsive decision. And with impulsive decisions came regret. Not even three months into that rather hastily arranged union, he found himself wondering what he was thinking. He couldn't play around anymore, he couldn't flirt (not that she ever said anything of the sort, he just refused to take his chances with a woman in her condition), he couldn't do anything. Not that he really could when they were seeing each other, but the vows he had agreed to were an exceptionally restrictive leash. The restrictions were real. They were something everyone could see. And something he took seriously. Which just made him grumpier than hell half the time.

It was one of those sorts of moods, complete with that train of thinking, that he arrived home from a mission in. On one hand, he was irritable because some girls just didn't understand that he was unavailable, and on the other hand, he was irritable because he couldn't go chasing the skirt of someone who was interested in him. This time, was interested to the point of blatantly propositioning him. The last thing he wanted to do was to come home to the thing that was irritating him the most, but he wanted a bath, and the tub was there.

His plan was to just kick off his shoes, march through the house, to the back, submerge himself in the old-fashioned tub, stay there until he felt relaxed enough to socialize, and then skip socializing all together in favor of sleeping. But the smell of cooked food caught his attention, and he found himself lured into the kitchen.

She had gotten incredibly decent at cooking meals that involved things other than vegetables. She still had a long way to go, but she was working hard to accommodate his tastes. On some level, that bothered him. He never asked her to change, but she still did, anyway. Then again, she still hit him on a regular basis, so perhaps it wasn't so bad. And also, he did like to watch her when she was being domestic. At the moment, she was fitting the image of the perfect housewife. Her feet were bare, her blonde hair pulled up into a ponytail. She was humming some tune he didn't recognize while she shifted from refrigerator to cabinet to stove in her quest to cook. Her apron (which she threw a fit when he teased her about it for she was trying to save her clothes from unsightly stains) was pulled around her waist, but was lifted higher than normal thanks to the very pronounced swell of her belly.

"So, have that bad of a day?"

That was another thing he hated. Sometime between then and now, she developed an extra sense. It was similar to his own heightened senses, but not the same. No, this was an extra sense, and that bothered him. He couldn't get away with anything around her. She always seemed to know how he felt. "It was… yeah," he grumbled, his hand slipping up to rub the base of his skull.

She gave him a look then, blue eyes searching, before she checked on something cooking on the stove. He knew then that she was aware of at least part of the problem and he had to resist the urge to sigh and start griping at her for it. Satisfied with the stove, she came over and directed him to sit down.

He was expecting a reprimand of some sort. She could nag pretty well when she got in the mood. But instead she simply worked on removing the apron and setting it aside. "Got something to show you," she said as she took one of his hands and rested it on belly.

He gave an annoyed snort, and tried to turn away, but she held his hand in place. He was not in the mood to play the part of an expectant father, even though the rational part of his mind said this was all his fault to begin with. Just when he was about to put his foot down, however, he frowned. He thought maybe his hand had a spasm. He had been working them pretty hard the last few days on his last mission, and he felt that was the source. But it happened again.

Curiosity getting the best of him, he tugged his hand away from hers, and began running his fingers over her. He kept feeling that faint spasm-like sensation, and then he found a spot that seemed more solid than the other parts of her abdomen. He thought it was odd, and like a child faced with a red button that said 'Do not push', he pressed his hand against it. He was rewarded with something shoving back at him almost hard enough to push his hand off of her flesh.

His perplexed expression caused her to giggle, and then it dawned on him exactly what she was showing him. He really couldn't help the stupid grin that spread across his face just then. He pulled her close, and settled his ear against the spot he had pressed against. Again, he was rewarded with something against his skin, and he couldn't help but think the boy (it had to be a boy, it just had to) was getting traits from his mother. For a few minutes, he entertained himself with playing with the moving patch of solidness that was moving around her belly.

He turned his head to look up at her, and she just smiled down at him, knowing that this little thing had lightened his mood considerably. He let out a sigh, and she reached out to poke his cheek as she usually did when she thought he was being silly about something. "Go clean up, dinner'll be ready soon." She pulled away, and he watched her as she went back to her task of cooking.

He carried an odd smile on his face as he took his bath, thinking over how he felt when he walked in through the front door, and how he felt now. He was still upset at the leash he had tied around his neck, but he figured he could live with it.

After all, sometimes impulse was just listening to your heart the first time around.


End file.
